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Third-Party Management

Holistic management of third-party relationships

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Enhancing visibility, realising value and meeting ESG commitments

Approaches to managing third parties have generally failed to keep pace with rapidly expanding third-party networks and their role in organisational success. Meanwhile, most organisations have increased their dependence on third parties, which now include not only suppliers of goods and services but also affiliates and joint venture partners, R&D organisations and sales channels, among others. In organisations that rely heavily on third parties, up to 80 percent of direct and indirect operating costs and 50 to 100 percent of revenues can be attributable to third-party relationships, based on Deloitte analysis with data compiled from research carried out by the Institute of Collaborative Working, Hiperos and Deloitte.

TPM processes are strongly embedded in functional domains

 and use ad hoc processes within functional siloes to implement individual programs rather than standardised co-ordinated processes. As a result, the organisation fails to gain significant synergies or connectivity across applications related to sourcing, procurement, risk management, contract life cycle management, ongoing monitoring and other TPM activities.

A holistic perspective on third parties covers the entire TPM lifecycle—from sourcing, procuring, and contracting through to monitoring, financial processing, and executive decision-making—across all third-party relationships. That perspective, and the integrated approach it fosters, is becoming a prerequisite for increasing efficiency, reducing costs, and meeting ESG commitments. Those benefits are realized by aggregating performance improvement opportunities and creating synergies across TPM processes.

Siloed third-party management presents a range of challenges and opportunities. The challenges relate mainly to excessive costs, lack of visibility, and compromised operating and risk-response capabilities. The opportunities stem from more timely, accurate, and actionable information on third parties and greater efficiency and effectiveness in TPM.

As an organization’s third-party network grows in terms of size, spend, and strategic importance, the business case for integrating TPM becomes stronger. Benefits of integrated TPM include reduced costs, enhanced shareholder value, greater responsiveness to change and crisis, and improved ESG performance (and perceptions).

The business case for integrated TPM closely aligns with the case for digitalization. Deloitte research into digital maturity has found a strong link between an organization’s digital maturity and its financial performance. That heightened performance is driven by data mastery, flexible yet secure IT infrastructure, and rationalized connected workflows.

Deloitte’s integrated solution consolidates third-party data drawn from existing TPM systems and, when useful, from external sources. It then applies analytics to that data to generate actionable insights and support strategic decision making. Such a solution can connect disparate software and platforms and support any individual or function with a role in TPM, as well as senior executives responsible for enterprise growth and value.

TPM Maturity Model

Many organisations get to the “developing” stage but then struggle to advance further in being able to integrate their TPM systems. Deloitte can assist such organisations with a smarter way to accelerate the journey to TPM integration using technologies such as UI and UX together with an analytics layer to overcome this barrier. This integrated approach can then be further enhanced by complementing it with a managed services platform where appropriate.

TPM processes are strongly embedded in functional domains and use ad hoc processes within functional siloes to implement individual programs rather than standardised co-ordinated processes.​

Some evidence of alignment and co-ordination across specific TPM processes exists, although inconsistently across the end-to-end process and the organisation.​

TPM processes are aligned and co-ordinated across the entire organisation, with mature capabilities used to achieve data mastery by aggregating siloed data and related systems.​

In addition to being integrated, process performance is continually improved through both incremental and innovative technological enhancements.​

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Key contacts

Kristian Park

Global Third Party Risk Management Leader
+44 (0)20 7303 4110